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New York Review of Books | Outlook India | HVG | Observator Cultural | Elet es Irodalom | Gazeta Wyborcza | London Review of Books | Polityka | Lettre International
New York Review of Books 11.12.2008 (USA)
The New York Review of Books publishes the "Charter 2008" which has been signed by over 300 Chinese intellectuals, among them government officials. It is intended as an homage to the Czecheslovakian "Charter 77" and was deliberately launched on December 10th, Human Rights Day. Liu Xiabo, one of the initiators, and several other signatories were arrested last Monday. The charta lists an entire catalogue of demands for democratising China: "Authoritarianism is in general decline throughout the world; in China, too, the era of emperors and overlords is on the way out. The time is arriving everywhere for citizens to be masters of states. For China the path that leads out of our current predicament is to divest ourselves of the authoritarian notion of reliance on an 'enlightened overlord' or an 'honest official' and to turn instead toward a system of liberties, democracy, and the rule of law, and toward fostering the consciousness of modern citizens who see rights as fundamental and participation as a duty."
Outlook India 21.12.2008 (India)
Don't look at Pakistan or at the Muslims, look in the mirror, Arundhati Roy urges her fellow Indians. There is no excuse for Islamic terrorism but, she maintains in her highly informative survey of – not always Muslim – terrorist attacks and the reaction of the politicians and the judiciary, war or Hindu terrorism are not the answer. Because terrorists, whatever their provenance, all have one thing in common: they need victims from their own ranks. This was proven again by the terrorists behind the Mumbai blasts: "If the men were indeed members of the Lashkar-e-Toiba, why didn't it matter to them that a large number of their victims were Muslim, or that their action was likely to result in a severe backlash against the Muslim community in India whose rights they claim to be fighting for? Terrorism is a heartless ideology, and like most ideologies that have their eye on the Big Picture, individuals don't figure in its calculations except as collateral damage. It has always been a part of - and often even the aim of - terrorist strategy to exacerbate a bad situation in order to expose hidden fault lines. The blood of 'martyrs' irrigates terrorism. Hindu terrorists need dead Hindus, Communist terrorists need dead proletarians, Islamist terrorists need dead Muslims."
HVG 13.12.2008 (Hungary)
Hungary's Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany has announced tough new measures to combat corruption. Good idea, writes the lawyer Andras Schiffer, in view of Hungary's poor performance in the Transparency International ratings where it has dropped from 39th to 47th position. It is just a shame that the new clamp-down has nothing to do with clearing up the chronic bout of corruption now underway. "Instead there will be anti-corruption lectures for the government - the fourth lot since 2003 – and a hotline where people can ring in to report corruption. And the most draconian measure is a sort of deal which will allow anyone informing the authorities about suspected corruption cases to obtain a share of the resulting revenue which goes to the state. This concept, which has been plucked from U.S legislation, suggests that the government has a peculiar idea about the people: they are not moral beings who might be prevented from informing on corrupt politicians out of fear, hopelessness or the lack of transparency, but they are greedy profiteers who think they deserve their cut. This view is particularly explicit in the introduction to the draft bill. The fight against corruption, it says, 'is of the utmost importance from the perspective of competitive capabilities of the Republic of Hungary and its interational image.' But there is not one reference to the quality of the democracy."
Observator Cultural 15.12.2008 (Romania)
Ovidiu Simonca talks to the writer Mircea Horia Simionescu, who turned 80 this year. When accused of misogyny he blithely replies: "You couldn't call me a skirt chaser but I've always had a way with the ladies. I was constantly in love." But it was the tragic experiences that were better for business. "I don't want to have to tell you again how useful the experience of infidelity is...for writing. I was hungry for knowledge: femininity and women were an object of study for me. A person is not complete if they haven't lived through these things. I also survived a train accident. And then there was the time when I was chaperoning two girls in the mountains. They were in my care, nothing else, and as we approached Piatra Arsa, we hit a blizzard. We looked into the abyss. We could have died, all three of us. Everything that happened to me was useful for my writing. All the adventures, all the accidents, the suicide attempt. Everything. Don't you think that's crazy?"
Elet es Irodalom 05.12.2008 (Hungary)
Looking back, Janos Szeky can't believe that Janos Kadar, the "legendary" General Secretary of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party, was held in such high esteem right to the end of his term in office. And not only in the West (where his campaign of revenge against the insurgents of 1956 was never mentioned), but also at home where he was considered a perfectly acceptable politician – as if no one had noticed what an intellectual lightweight he was. He himself admitted to being "a primitive person". Szeky writes: "The masses were delighted with someone who had as poor a command of the Hungarian language as they did, speaking in nothing but truisms. None of this worked against him, it actually increased the dictator's unquestionable popularity. It seems to be a golden rule that obvious intelligence in not a trait that people want to see in politicians. But it is alarming what an effect the primitiveness and the mental decay of the former general secretary had on political behavioural patterns in Hungary after the fall of Communism – a complex sentence with a hint of irony in it is seen as proof of transgression and arrogance. This ties in with the terrible anti-intellectualism so prevalent in the media, which to a large extent is the fault of the legislators who in turn grew up with the Kadar model."
Gazeta Wyborcza 13.12.2008 (Poland)
Russia might have lost hundreds of billions of dollars in the credit crisis but Victor Erofeev is not satisfied yet! "There is a general feeling of fear that something is going to happen. We just don't know what it is or how bad it will be. It might come in the form of social unrest, because of all the job losses, but whether it will be enough to force through change, is unclear. Until now, our elites have only recognised that it is better to take capital out of the country. You could say that Russia is waiting for its Tsunami," the Russian writer said in an interview.
London Review of Books 15.12.2008 (UK)
In a "Diary" column the writer Tariq Ali gives a sober description of a number of terrible "honour killings" in Pakistan. At the end of the article we found out how he was affected personally: "In the last week of October, my uncle's granddaughter, Zainab, barely 18 years old, was shot dead by her brothers, Inam and Hamza Ahmed. Zainab apparently had a lover and despite repeated warnings refused to stop seeing him. She was on the phone to him in her grandfather's house when her brothers pumped seven bullets into her body. I don't know whether her mother, Ghairat’s oldest daughter Roohi, whom I last saw when she was about ten, was part of the plot. Whether or not she was involved, I find it deeply shocking that my uncle allowed the young woman's body to be buried that same day without at least insisting that a First Information Report be lodged at the local police station, let alone demanding an autopsy."
Polityka 11.12.2008 (Poland)
Throughout the nineties, Kazimiera Szczuka regrets to inform us (here in German), Polish women writers were either ridiculed, published in series entitled "for the handbag" and "with the broom" – or written off by the critic Przemyslaw Czaplinski as petit-bourgeois. But things have changed, writes Szczuka. "Like Izabela Filipiak whose book 'Absolutna Amnezja' attracted so much critical attention, today Bozena Keff and other women writers of the youngest generation are attempting to refresh the national paradigms. The language has changed, as have the times and the literary institutions, but the basic question is as burning as ever: where is women's place in history? Who has the right to construct a collective narrative? Dorota Maslowska's play 'Misdzy nami dobrze jest' (We Have It Good), Keff's 'Utwor o Matce i Ojczyznie' (A Play about Mother and Homeland), an oratorio or poem which has actually been recognised as a masterpiece by Maria Janion and Przemyslaw Czaplinski, and finally the brilliant debut collection of short stories by the renowned anarcho-feminist Sylwia 'Dervish' Chutnik 'Kieszonkowy atlas kobiet' (Pocket Atlas of Women)."
Lettre International 16.12.2008 (Germany)
If, in the Eastern Bloc, you ordered "young onions, fresh Alpen butter, radishes if you have them, and two soft-boiled eggs", the waiter would bring "on a lovely old tray" three old onions, their outer skins removed, and a salty old black radish with caraway seeds. For Peter Nadas this was a sign of simulation at work: "In those years the grand idea that this society had come up with for the purposes of self-preservation was improvisation, mimicry, simulation. What could be replaced with what, and what could be swapped with what, what could be covered up or coated with what, how could something be renamed, disguised and above all: What could you secretly appropriate? And because the people whose vocation it was to name things would never call things by their names, or rather were constantly and unpredictably giving them other names than those to which they were naturally entitled, words in conversation functioned merely as cautious allusions, not as descriptions. It went so far that in essence, the difference between yes and no disappeared."
RSS
The New York Times investigates the new hunger for reality. In Salon, Andrzej Stasiuk sees only individual realities. In the Gazeta Wyborcza, the ethnologist Tomasz Rakowski describes the reality of the Polish poor mines. Sometimes you can turn reality on its head, El Pais reads in the Financial Times. Le Monde diplomatique gives the low-down on the ACTA talks. And the New Yorker dreams of less polish and a bit more grit.
In Magyar Narancs Agnes Heller demands more civil courage of the Hungarians. Mohammed Ali Atassi explains in Qantara, why conservatives in Egypt see women as candy: either wrapped or covered in flies. Oliver Roy outlines in Resetdoc, why's there not so much as a hair's breadth between the Christian right and the secular left. In Magazin, the philosopher Ludwig Haslar tells the Swiss that if they want mediocrity today, they cannot expect the superman tomorrow. Jonathan Safran Foer tells Prospect why he neither wants a chicken in his bed nor on his plate. The NYT embarks on a human-flesh search and finds a kitten killer.
The New Yorker tells the story of how corrupt podiatrists almost brought down the US health system. In Polityka, the Kapuscinski biographer Artur Domoslawski explains how he thinks the legendary reporter should be read. In Tygodnik, Zygmunt Bauman calls for more understanding for Kapuscinski. Magyar Narancs celebrates the ban on Holocaust denial in Hungary. In Le Point, Jorge Semprun asks whether Claude Lanzmann is the only person who's allowed to talk about the Holocaust. Wired describes how Google learned how to tell the difference between a hot dog and a poached pooch.
In Eurozine, the Transylvanian-Hungarian-Armenian writer Kinga Kali tells the story of a "virgjinesha". Prospect celebrates the next art superstar, Argentinian painter Guillermo Kuitca. The Gazeta Wyborcza explains how young people use the web. The New Yorker sends out a message to the depressed: stay away from psychiatric literature. Outlook Indian learns to play Carnatic music online. The London Review swims with the salmon sages.
The Atlantic finds out why the Chinese are not enemy number one in cyberspace. Elet es Irodalom asks why no one in Hungary is interested in former informers. In New Statesman, Tariq Ramadan can't tell us what a moderate Muslim is. The Guardian hearkens to the ticking bomb in Emily Dickinson's bosom and links it to the shards of crockery on the floor. And if it can't smoke, El Pais Semanal wants everything painted black.
In Prospect, Tim Berners-Lee invites the world to play with the British government's data. England, not Nigeria belongs on the terrorist list, literary Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka informs The Daily Beast. In Rue 89, Beppe Grillo explains why Sarkozy is more dangerous than Berlusconi. In Tygodnik Powszechny, Stefan Chwin mourns for the Polish idealist. Polityka reveals where a Pole turns to when he's not allowed to marry. Olga Tokarczuk walks her Polish tangle around Amsterdam for Salon. And the Guardian thinks about Armenian women rubbing their soft breasts on a stone.
In Wired, Chris Anderson celebrates the next industrial revolution - taking place in garages near you. The Boston Globe serenades the camel - Nabati style. In El Pais Semenal, the sociologist Edgar Morin complains about European lethargy. Outlook India asks why the Australians hate the Indians. Odra and Tygodnik are still debating the impact of freedom on literature. In OpenDemocracy, Salome Zourabichvili mourns for the wilted petals of the rose revolution. In Prospect, Martin Amis divides the literary sheep from the goats, according to the pleasure principle. The NYT profiles a dyed-in-the-wool jihadist from Alabama.
Das Magazin reports on the dramatic increase in the number of pupils who have threatened to gun down their classmates. The Spectator warns City bankers about gun-wielding dominatrices in Switzerland. In Sinn und Form, Marc Fumaroli remembers the man whose name shall not be mentioned: Mario Praz. In the New Humanist, Laurie Taylor remembers the holy men who sexually abused him as a child. The Guardian asks why Theo von Doesburg slipped into avant garde oblivion. And in the NYRB, Garry Kasparov asks why computer chess programmers are so uninspired?
OpenDemocracy explains why a novel called "Paranoia" suddenly disappeared from Belarussian bookshops. Prospect fears that a ban on Islam4UK could undermine British democracy. The Gazeta Wyborcza explores Polish-Jewish relations. Le Monde diplomatique watches the carving up of Africa. In El Pais Semanal, maths whizz Marcus du Sautoy explains the sex appeal of suduko. And Gerhard Richter manages to surprise the Nation.
The New Yorker buries itself in the Arab novel. In Le Monde, Bernard-Henri Levy heaps scorn on the state-run caricature of a debate. Qantara points to the person responsible for all the misery in the Arab world: Daddy. In L'Espresso, Umberto Eco takes a pin to the overblown daily paper. The Nation has earmarked 30 billion dollars to save journalism. In Tygodnik Powszechny, the writer Wojciech Albinski explains what makes Poland exotic. And the Spectator waves a tear-stained old hanky as shabby chic fades into the past.
In Merkur, art historian Wolfgang Ullrich defines a new type of artist: the contractor. In Nepszabadsag, writer Peter Nadas considers the crisis in Hungary and how it might end. In NouvelObs, Francis Ford Coppola explains why DVDs should be free. Eurozine introduces Lithuanian literature. In the New York Review of Books, Wyatt Manson asks why Pleiade is omitting Celine's anti-Semitic trilogy from the collected works. In Express, Philippe Gavi reminds us that Mohammed was not a crazed killer. A Californian marvels in NZZ Folio, at the reincarnation of an Indian factory worker. And confronted with the recent proliferation of literary cuddling, the New York Times yearns for a bit of Philip Roth.
Wired tracks James Cameron's 32-year quest to out-Lucas Lucas. In Nouvel Obs, Alain Finkielkraut and Alain Badiou tear each other apart over immigration and national identity. Tygodnik Powszechny introduces the pioneering artist Miroslaw Balka. Andras Bozoki asks why Hungarians are undermining democracy. In The New Statesman, Leo McKinstry explains why the bombing of Coventry was an inspiration to the British Air Staff.
Vanity Fair goes in search of a superpartner. Elet es Irodalom reads a new collection of essays by Imre Keresz. Outlook India complains about journalistic corruption. The New Yorker reads a new Koestler biography. Nepszabadsag foresees the next French revolution. Rue89 wonders about the provenance of prawns. And in the New Republic, Moshe Halberthal celebrates the sublime humility of Amartya Sen.
In Wilson Quarterly, the economist Tyler Cowen sings an ode to multitasking. Prospect has seen the monsters of the left. The Boston Globe follows James C. Scott to the new Shangri-La in the mountains of Tibet. Weltwoche is up in arms about the criticism of Switzerland's anti-minaret vote. In the Novel Obs, Pierre Nora applies his mind to the bestseller. New Criterion knows why the Pop art bubble won't pop. NZZ Folio examines the chicken nugget. Al Ahram asks what political Islam wants. The Walrus mourns for the first victim of the C-58. In Resetdoc, Joseph Massad explains why Arab homosexuals are an invention of the West.
Slovenian poet Ales Debeljak argues for a fusion of cultures in Eurozine. Umberto Eco agrees in Le Monde. The Nation portrays the Salvadorian author Horacio Castellanos Moya, who himself explains in Babelia why 200 years after independence there's nothing to celebrate in a number of Latin American countries. Polityka lies Poland down on the couch. La vie des idees reads a book on Jews and the resistance in France. Americans read more than Europeans, writes historian Peter Baldwin in Merkur. And in The New York Review of Books Robert Darnton makes two bold proposals for a new Book Settlement.